The only cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

- Dorothy Parker

Teachers have experience and stories about practice. Research provides them with evidence and authority to support their claims.

- Jane Mace (Quigley & Norton, 2002, p. 5)

What do you do when you become aware of a situation or idea related to your literacy work that is intriguing, puzzling or problematic? Perhaps you talk about the idea with a colleague, read a book or article about it, or try a different approach to address the situation. A research in practice project has the same sorts of starting points but is an opportunity to investigate a topic or question in more systematic ways. A Traveler's Guide to Literacy Research in Practice was written to help you to research a situation or idea related to your practice.

Research is generally described as a systematic or structured process of inquiry. In this Guide, research in practice refers to systematic inquiry done by people directly involved in literacy practice. Although the focus is on doing research, the Guide may also help you to critically engage with and respond to research that is relevant to your practice.^{Footnote 2}

Literacy practice includes the wide range of activities that help people learn, use and extend reading, writing, math and related skills.^{Footnote 3} This practice occurs in organized literacy programs and other places where people gather and are supported to develop literacy. Research in practice is usually done to understand and improve our practice—to make a difference for adult learners. Research in practice is also a way to document and share practitioners' and learners' knowledge.

You may be familiar with other terms for research in practice, such as practitioner research, practitioner inquiry, teacher research and action research. In Canada, the term research in practice has been used quite intentionally to emphasize that this research is about what happens in practice, and that it is conducted by people who are located inside practice (Malicky, 2000). Research in practice is rooted in a belief that practitioners and students are producers as well as consumers of knowledge. As practitioners, our knowledge is often based in experience and we may know much more than we are able to explain. Research is one way to name and tell what we know, as well as one way to question and extend our knowledge.

Whether conducted inside or outside of practice, research is one approach to creating knowledge. We come to know and hold knowledge in a multitude of ways, including our everyday practice of literacy work. However, research as a way of knowing carries a lot of weight in mainstream society, and some research approaches and related beliefs about knowledge have carried more weight than others (as we'll discuss later).

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